Collaboration: the best of both worlds

Insights from Andrew Small, inspired by our research with Cisco, Digital Dislocation

Around 600 million people around the world watched as Neil Armstrong took the first step on the moon and heard him utter those memorable words. Yet 47 years later, some employees out of the office are unable to connect with their colleagues for a videoconference held in the same country.

This is a problem that’s going to stick around, if we’re not careful. Because there’s a strange disconnect between what employees want and what the business wants. One that doesn’t make sense.

Businesses want to save money.

In fact, they’re expected to. In our recent Digital Dislocation report, we found IT decision makers need to cut down on how much they’re spending on mobile costs and roaming charges- nearly two in three need to bring down business costs.

People want to balance work and life.

They want to work on the move and use lots of collaboration tools. Our research found nearly two in three workers are frustrated with the time they waste contacting colleagues. And nearly 75 per cent of employees long for easier ways to share information.

But collaboration technology can help with both.

If people want to work on the move, and business leaders need to cut down on travel costs – collaboration technology is the obvious choice. It cuts down on operational costs, and lets you skip paying for that flight abroad for a single meeting.

The investment can pay off in other ways, too. You can beat your competitor to market, by helping your people make decisions faster. And you can even earn more, by using the same tools to improve your customer relationships, sharing information between departments much better. As an added bonus, you can even cut down on your customer service costs.

And let’s not forget that time is money. If your people are using their time better, if they’re being more productive, then you’re getting more work done for the same salary.

The trick is in using the right processes.

Where some companies fall down, and don’t get the benefit of collaboration technology, is not having the right processes and workflows in place. It isn’t enough to just introduce videoconferencing, for example. You need to make it part of your culture, and you need to make the user experience great, so people want to use it..

You need to make it part of everybody’s work. Make sure you give your people the training they need. Get your leaders to embrace the technology and use it. The rest of your people will follow then by example.

So if you want to save money and increase productivity, take one small step for your beleaguered colleagues trying to communicate with each other and embrace collaboration.

And here’s why you should download the report.

How big a problem is “digital dislocation” in the workplace? We’ve surveyed 758 IT decision makers in large organisations to find out how they are using technology to drive collaboration and growth.

Out-of-date communications infrastructure and limited investment in new technology are holding back the introduction of new collaboration technologies that employees want to use, resulting in employees increasingly bringing their own devices to work. And this brings certain risks for large organisations around the world – a digital dislocation.

Our global survey reveals just how big a problem ‘digital dislocation’ is in the workplace.